Mini Reviews: June 24th

 

The President is Missing by Bill Clinton & James Patterson

Narrated by Dennis Quaid, January LaVoy , Peter Ganim, Jeremy Davidson, Mozhan Marnò 

Duration: 12 hours 55 minutes

It has been a while since I've read or listened to a political thriller. I was actually excited to start this one after learning President Clinton co-authored this book. I'm not sure how much of it was written by him but I suspected certain parts of the book were heavily inspired by him. This had an interesting premise of a virus that could cripple the United States. President Duncan goes "missing" in order to stop the virus from activating. The story was fast-paced and exciting. I highly enjoyed the different narrators as they read the different characters for each chapter. 

However, some of the information about the enemies and the virus went over my head (I found myself day dreaming a lot) and Duncan's silence regarding his knowledge of what was happening at the beginning was a little irritating. Also, his presidential speech at the end recapped everything, and I mean everything that happened in the book. I felt that the story was just repeating itself. This could have been shortened or skipped over. 

But...this was not a bad book. I may read the second book written by Patterson and Clinton. I rate it: 3 stars. 

***

Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics by Dolly Parton

Narrated by Dolly Parton

Duration: 5 hours 18 minutes

Though I don't follow Dolly Parton, I do admire the woman so I figured I'll give this book a try. I both read and listened to it. The audiobook was quite interesting. It felt as if Dolly was being interviewed instead of her reading from the book. A male narrator presented the different sections of the book and Dolly would just speak whatever came to her mind. I was a little confused of the audiobook's style so I checked out the physical copy of the book to see how it was written. The written portions of the physical book pretty much contained the words that were spoken in the audiobook. I am not sure if Dolly was interviewed first then someone transcribed her words into writing. Either way, it was a fun book to listen to and read the book.

The physical book was beautiful put together. The visuals that accompanied were gorgeous. I enjoyed looking at the old photographs of Dolly and the important people in her life, pictures of Dolly's belongings, and especially pictures of the pages of Dolly's original lyrics to her music. The book contained the lyrics while the audiobook played short clips of her songs.

Overall, this book was fun to be listened to while reading the physical book at the same time. The audio production was different but it was entertaining. I rate it: 4 stars.